Opening the text

Introduction to the Literature of Europe in the Fifteenth, Sixteenth, and Seventeenth Centuries, Vol. 1Hallam, Henry

History

Introduction to the Literature of Europe in the Fifteenth, Sixteenth, and Seventeenth Centuries, Vol. 1

Name: Introduction to the Literature of Europe in the Fifteenth, Sixteenth, and Seventeenth Centuries, Vol. 1
Author: Hallam, Henry

Hallam, Henry

Literature, Modern -- History and criticism

2. No very conspicuous events belong to this decennial period. The
spirit of improvement, already so powerfully excited in Italy, continued
to produce the same effects in rescuing ancient manuscripts from the
chances of destruction, accumulating them in libraries, making
translations from the Greek, and by intense labour in the perusal of the
best authors, rendering both their substance and their language familiar
to the Italian scholar. The patronage of Cosmo de’ Medici, Alfonso king
of Naples, and Nicolas of Este, has already been mentioned. Lionel,
successor of the last prince, was by no means inferior to him in love of
letters. But they had no patron so important as Nicolas V. (Thomas of
Sarzana), who became Pope in 1447; nor has any later occupant of that
chair, without excepting Leo X., deserved equal praise as an encourager
of learning. Nicolas founded the Vatican library, and left it, at his
death in 1455, enriched with 5000 volumes; a treasure far exceeding that
of any other collection in Europe. Every scholar who needed maintenance,
which was of course the common case, found it at the court of Rome;
innumerable benefices, all over Christendom, which had fallen into the
grasp of the holy see, and frequently required of their incumbents, as
is well known, neither residence, nor even the priestly character,
affording the means of generosity, which have seldom been so laudably
applied. Several Greek authors were translated into Latin by direction
of Nicolas V., among which are the history of Diodorus Siculus, and
Xenophon’s Cyropædia, by Poggio,[310] who still enjoyed the office of
apostolical secretary, as he had under Eugenius IV., and with still more
abundant munificence on the part of the pope; Herodotus and Thucydides
by Valla, Polybius by Peroti, Appian by Decembrio, Strabo by Gregory of
Tiferno and Guarino of Verona, Theophrastus by Gaza, Plato de Legibus,
Ptolemy’s Almagest, and the Præparatio Evangelica of Eusebius, by George
of Trebizond.[311] These translations, it has been already
observed, will not bear a very severe criticism, but certainly there was
an extraordinary cluster of learning round the chair of this excellent
pope.

Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.

Opening the text

Introduction to the Literature of Europe in the Fifteenth, Sixteenth, and Seventeenth Centuries, Vol. 1Hallam, Henry

History

Introduction to the Literature of Europe in the Fifteenth, Sixteenth, and Seventeenth Centuries, Vol. 1

Hallam, Henry

Literature, Modern -- History and criticism

2. No very conspicuous events belong to this decennial period. The
spirit of improvement, already so powerfully excited in Italy, continued
to produce the same effects in rescuing ancient manuscripts from the
chances of destruction, accumulating them in libraries, making
translations from the Greek, and by intense labour in the perusal of the
best authors, rendering both their substance and their language familiar
to the Italian scholar. The patronage of Cosmo de’ Medici, Alfonso king
of Naples, and Nicolas of Este, has already been mentioned. Lionel,
successor of the last prince, was by no means inferior to him in love of
letters. But they had no patron so important as Nicolas V. (Thomas of
Sarzana), who became Pope in 1447; nor has any later occupant of that
chair, without excepting Leo X., deserved equal praise as an encourager
of learning. Nicolas founded the Vatican library, and left it, at his
death in 1455, enriched with 5000 volumes; a treasure far exceeding that
of any other collection in Europe. Every scholar who needed maintenance,
which was of course the common case, found it at the court of Rome;
innumerable benefices, all over Christendom, which had fallen into the
grasp of the holy see, and frequently required of their incumbents, as
is well known, neither residence, nor even the priestly character,
affording the means of generosity, which have seldom been so laudably
applied. Several Greek authors were translated into Latin by direction
of Nicolas V., among which are the history of Diodorus Siculus, and
Xenophon’s Cyropædia, by Poggio,[310] who still enjoyed the office of
apostolical secretary, as he had under Eugenius IV., and with still more
abundant munificence on the part of the pope; Herodotus and Thucydides
by Valla, Polybius by Peroti, Appian by Decembrio, Strabo by Gregory of
Tiferno and Guarino of Verona, Theophrastus by Gaza, Plato de Legibus,
Ptolemy’s Almagest, and the Præparatio Evangelica of Eusebius, by George
of Trebizond.[311] These translations, it has been already
observed, will not bear a very severe criticism, but certainly there was
an extraordinary cluster of learning round the chair of this excellent
pope.

Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.

Introduction to the Literature of Europe in the Fifteenth, Sixteenth, and Seventeenth Centuries, Vol. 1

Introduction to the Literature of Europe in the Fifteenth, Sixteenth, and Seventeenth Centuries, Vol. 1

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